Pearl Couscous Salad with Basil Pesto
Pearl couscous salad is the star of this dish with afresh basil pesto. Tiny pearls cook on the stovetop in no time and then gets tossed with colorful vegetables, mozzarella cheese. A healthy salad or side dish that packs so much flavor!
Servings: 4 servings
Ingredients
- 1 Cup Couscous (uncooked) Israeli Pearl variety
- ¼ cup basil pesto
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- 1 red pepper
- 1 tbsp mascarpone cheese
- ½ cup marinated roasted artichokes
- ¼ cup sundried tomatoes
- 1/3 cup marinated olives
- ½ cup mozzarella cheese
- 1 tbsp parmesan cheese
- ¼ cup walnuts
- 2 tbsp chopped basil
Instructions
- In a pot or pan, heat 1 tbsp oil. Once the oil is warm enough, sauté red bell pepper quickly keeping the crunchy texture. Just cook them slightly. Remove them.
- In the same pot or pan, add couscous and toast it for few seconds. Once the couscous is toasted add about 1 ¾ cup water and salt in it and bring it to a boil. Once it comes to full boil, decrease the heat and let it cook preferably covered with a lid until all the water is evaporated, and couscous is cooked. If you need to add more water, then please do.
- It takes 8 minutes approximately to cook couscous. Stir in 1 tbsp of mascarpone cheese. You can leave this out as it is very small quantity, but if you have it then please add it. You can substitute with sour cream or crème fraiche too instead of mascarpone cheese.
- In the same pot, mix toss pesto, and rest of the other ingredients like artichokes, olives, sun dried tomatoes, parmesan and mozzarella cheese and nuts.
- Garnish with some chopped basil leaves and more nuts if you wish.
- Serve it at room temperature.
Notes
- The leftovers store very well for 2-3 days in an air-tight container.
- I used pearled garlic and olive oil couscous from whole foods which has some seasoning packet. I used the seasoning too.
- If you are using plain couscous, then add ½ tsp garlic powder while boiling it.